The present invention relates to a mechanism for opening and closing of a lid applied to a container device for a vehicle.
In a vehicle such as an automobile, a vehicle interior is provided with various container devices for the vehicle. Such a container device for the vehicle generally has a container device body and a lid (lid body) attached freely openable and closable to the container device body. In addition, there has been also known the container device having an elastic member which is provided between the container device body and the lid and which biases the lid toward a direction to which the lid opens, and a damper which attenuates the biasing force of the elastic member.
The container device having the elastic member and the damper is possible to automatically open the lid by the action that the biasing force of the elastic member applied to the lid, and is further possible to open the lid at a most appropriate opening speed by attenuating the biasing force of the elastic member with the damper.
On the other hand, there is a problem that operational feeling of an operator is not so good when closing the lid in the container device having the elastic member and the damper, since the biasing force of the elastic member becomes a load to the operator throughout an entire range of closing of the lid when the operator closes the lid. In addition, there are many cases in which an inexpensive bidirectional damper is used for the damper, rather than a unidirectional damper which is high in cost. Accordingly, the attenuating force of the bidirectional damper also becomes the load to the operator throughout the entire range of closing of the lid in addition to the biasing force of the elastic member, thereby causing the operational feeling of the operator even worse.
Given this factor, there has been developed a container device for the vehicle wherein an free-running section, in which the attenuating force of the bidirectional damper is not generated, is set in an early stage of opening and closing of the lid, as disclosed in JP2002-331875A for reference. When the free-running section of the damper is set in the early stage of opening and closing of the lid, the load in the early stage of closing of the lid is only the biasing force of the elastic member. Thereby, operational force required to operate the lid is partially lowered by the fact that the load is only the biasing force of the elastic member, and hence, it is possible to improve the operational feeling of the operator, partially.
However, there is a drawback in JP2002-331875A that an opening speed of the lid becomes too fast when the lid opens since the biasing force of the elastic member cannot be attenuated in the early stage of opening of the lid due to the setting of the free-running section, and thus an opening speed of the lid attractive to the operator cannot be attained. In addition, the biasing force of the elastic member and the attenuating force of the bidirectional damper both act as the load in a later stage of the closing of the lid to the end. Hence, there is also a drawback in JP2002-331875A that the operational feeling of the operator at the time when the closing of the lid is finished is bad.